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THE 



Poison GROtFTH of 
Prussianism 

''Oh, Land of Now, oh, 
Land of Then'* 



BY 

Otto H. Kahn 



ADDRESS IN AUDITORIXJM 

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN 

JANUARY 13, 1918 



THE 

Poison Growth of 
Prussianism 

''Oh, Land of Now, oh, 
Lafid of Then" 



BY 

Otto H. Kahn 



ADDRESS IN AtTJITORIUM 

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN 

JANUARY 13, 1918 



^i 



-^^^ 



^AAVGrEKess FROM 
^^"CC?j:.irNT DIVJ310.V 



The Poison Growth of Prussianism 

Address in 

Auditorium, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 

January 13,1918 

THE speech I am about to make 
is attuned to the spirit and the 
fact of war. 
A few days ago, as you aU know, 
President Wilson once more spoke to 
this nation and to the world in a great 
and noble message of splendid vision — 
holding up a veritable beacon light of 
right and justice for all peoples. 

We all pray with eager and earnest 
hope that the German people will 
recognize the spirit and meaning of 
that lofty utterance and that, casting 
aside the odious leadership of the mili- 
tarists, they will grasp the hand 

[3] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

stretched out to them in such generous 
and unselfish meaning. 

Even as I speak the leaven of that 
great message may be working in 
Germany with potent effect. I have 
no information other than what you 
all have, but I hope I am not over- 
sanguine in giving heed to a feeling 
that some parts of what I am going to 
say are perhaps in process of being 
superseded by events that may be 
forming. 

Let us all trust that it be so, and that 
we may soon be enabled to substitute 
for the harsh accents of arraignment 
and enmity the feelings and the lan- 
guage of peaceful intercourse and of 
that new relationship which the Presi- 
dent's leadership is seeking to bring 
about amongst all the nations. 

But until that "consummation de- 
voutly to be wished" is attained, let us 
take care lest we permit the hope of it 

[4] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

to diminish our effort or to weaken our 
determination. Neither hope nor any 
other motive or influence must be 
suffered for one moment to divert us 
from the stern and resokite pursuit, to 
the utmost of our capacity, of our high 
and solemn purpose as it has been pro- 
claimed in the great messages of 
America's spokesman and leader. 



In attempting to deal with the ques- 
tions that I shall discuss, I must apolo- 
gize for using the personal pronoun a 
good deal more than would seem con- 
sonant with due modesty. My excuse 
is that whatever weight my observa- 
tions may have with you, lies mainly in 
the fact that I am of German birth, 
that until the outbreak of the Avar I 
kept in close touch with German men 
and affairs, that I loved the old Ger- 

[5] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

many and that the conclusions which 
I am about to state I have reached in 
grief and bitter disappointment. 

For these reasons, also, what I shall 
say from personal knowledge and ob- 
servation and in a personal way may 
have some effect upon those among 
my fellow citizens of my own blood 
whose eyes may not have been opened 
fully to the difference between the 
Germany they knew and the Germany 
of 1914, and who, owing to insufficient 
and incorrect information, may not yet 
have discerned with entire clearness the 
path of right and duty nor perceived the 
true inwardness of the unprecedented 
tragedy which has befallen the world. 



[6 



OF P R U S S I A N I S 3/ 



II 



The world has been hurt within 
these past three years as it was never 
hurt before. In the gloomy and accus- 
ing procession of infinite sorrow and 
pain which was started on that thrice 
accursed day of July, 1914, the hurt 
inflicted on Americans of German 
descent takes its tragically rightful 
place. 

The iron has entered our souls. We 
have been wantonly robbed of invalu- 
able possessions which have come down 
to us through the centuries; we have 
been rendered ashamed of that in 
which we took pride; we have been 
made the enemies of those of our own 

[7] 



TEE POISON GROWTH 

blood ; our very names carry the sound 
of a challenge to the world. 

Surely we have all too valid a title to 
rank amongst those most bitterly ag- 
grieved by Prussianism, and to align 
ourselves in the very forefront of those 
who in word and deed are fighting to 
rid the world forever of that malignant 
growth. 

Heaven knows, I do not want, by 
anything I may be saying or doing, to 
add one ounce to the burden of the 
world's execration which rests already 
with crushing weight upon the rulers of 
Germany and their misguided people. 
Nor do I seek forgiveness for my Ger- 
man birth by demonstrative zeal in 
action or speech. 

I was and am proud of the great in- 
heritance which came to me as a 
birthright and of the illustrious con- 
tributions which the German people 
have made to the imperishable assets 



F 



R U S S I A N I >S M 



of the world. Until the outbreak of 
the war in 1914, 1 maintained close and 
active personal and business relations 
in Germany. I was well acquainted 
with a number of the leading person- 
ages of the country. I served in the 
German army thirty years ago. I took 
an active interest in furthering German 
art in America. 

I do not apologize for, nor am I 
ashamed of, my German birth. But I 
am ashamed— bitterly and grievously 
ashamed— of the Germany which 
stands convicted before the high 
tribunal of the world's pubhc opinion 
of having planned and willed war; of 
the revolting deeds committed in Bel- 
gium and northern France, of the m- 
famy of the Lusitania murders, of 
innumerable violations of The Hague 
convention and the law of nations, of 
abominable and perfidious plotting in 
friendly countries and shameless abuse 



THE POISON GROWTH 

of their hospitality, of crime heaped 
upon crime in hideous defiance of the 
laws of God and men. 

I cherish the memories of my youth, 
but these very memories make me cry 
out in pain and wrath against those who 
have befouled the spiritual soil of the 
old Germany, in which they were rooted. 

I revere the high ideals and fine tra- 
ditions of that old Germany and the 
time-honored conceptions of right 
conduct which my parents and the 
teachers of my early youth bade me 
treasure throughout life, but all the 
more burning is my resentment, all the 
more deeply grounded my hostility, 
against the Prussian caste who tram- 
pled those ideals, traditions and con- 
ceptions in the dust. 

Long before the war, I had come to 
look upon Prussianism as amongst the 
deadliest poison growths that ever 
sprang from the soil of the spirit of man. 

[10] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S 31 

When the war broke out in Europe, 
when Belgium was invaded, I searched 
my conscience and my judgment in 
sorrow and anguish, the powerful voice 
of blood arguing against the still, 
small voice of right. 

And it became clear to me to the 
point of solemn and unshakeable con- 
viction that Prussianism, in mad in- 
fatuation, had committed the crowning 
sin of outraging and defying the con- 
science of the world and of challenging 
right to mortal combat against might 
and that the cause which the Allies 
were defending was our cause, because 
it was the cause of peace, humanity, 
justice and liberty (aye, liberty, even 
though Russia, then under autocratic 
rule, happened to be arrayed on that 
side, and even though diplomats and 
rulers made that sacred cause the basis 
and excuse for territorial barter and 
trade and spoils hunting). 

fill 



THE POISON GROWTH 

In accordance with this conviction, 
I have acted and spoken ever since, 
but I did not feel that it would be either 
right or fitting for me publicly to 
state and agitate my views as long as 
our country was neutral. 

Now, America, the never-defeated, 
has thrown her sword into the scale, 
because to do so was indispensable for 
the vindication of the basic and element- 
ary principles of right and peace among 
the nations, no less than for our own 
honor and our own safety, the preserva- 
tion of our institutions and our very 
destiny. 

To co-operate towards the success- 
ful conclusion of the war is the one 
and supreme duty of every American, 
regardless of birth, of sympathies and 
of political views. The American of 
German descent who, in this time of 
test and trial, does not serve the land 
of his adoption with the utmost meas- 

[12] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

ure of single-minded devotion and 
with every ounce of his power, per- 
jured himself when he took his oath 
of allegiance and proves himself guilty 
of treacherous duplicity. 

Thank Heaven, the number of those 
lukewarm in their patriotism, or failing 
in loyalty, is very small indeed, far too 
small to affect the record of Americans 
of German birth for good citizenship and 
service to the country in peace and war. 

There is abundant evidence that the 
overwhelming majority, indeed all but 
an insignificant minority, meant what 
they said when they swore full and sole 
allegiance to America, that they will 
prove themselves wholly worthy of the 
high privilege of citizenship and of the 
generous trust of their native fellow 
citizens, and that they will not fail or 
falter under any test whatsoever. 

We will not permit the blood in our 
veins to drown the conscience in our 

[131 



THE POISON G R W T II 

breast. We will heed the call of honor 
beyond the call of race. 

We will wear as a badge of honor 
the abuse and spite of those who place 
another cause, whatever it be, above 
the Nation's cause and who see hypoc- 
risy or hidden motives behind the plain 
profession of unconditional loyalty on 
the part of the American of foreign 
birth, because unconditional American 
loyalty is not in them. 

Yet, it is not enough for us Ameri- 
cans of German descent to do our duty 
by our country and fellow citizens, 
however fully and unreservedly, if we 
do it in resigned and oppressed silence. 
I believe we should speak out. We 
must give voice to our unflinching 
loyalty and to our deep conviction of 
the justice of America's cause. 

It is hard indeed, for us to arraign 
publicly the country from which we 
sprang and to turn against our own 

[14] 



OF PRUSSIANISM 

kith and kin, however deep our detesta- 
tion of their wrongdoing under the 
spiritual and actual sway of the Prus- 
sian caste and however sincere our 
allegiance to America. It will be 
easily understood by all fair-minded 
men that right thinking persons will 
shrink from so speaking and acting as 
to lay themselves open to the accusa- 
tion of being time-servers or popularity 
seekers, and to expose their motives to 
misconstruction . 

These scruples are honorable, and 
they are felt by many whose patriotic 
loyalty and devotion are beyond all 
question. But, to my thinking, they 
are stamped out by the iron tread of 
the times. 

I believe that we should speak out, 
we Americans of German birth, because 
we have been misrepresented to our 
fellow citizens and to the world by 
a small minority of professional spokes- 

[15] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

men and pernicious agitators, by no 
means all of German birth. 

We must protect the German name, 
as far as it is in our keeping, in America, 
if, alas, we cannot protect it elsewhere. 

It has always, and rightly, been an 
honored name here, and those who 
bore it have ever done their full share 
for the common weal, in the works of 
peace no less than in every crisis of the 
Nation's history. Let us do what in us 
lies to preserve the names we bear in 
honor and good standing amongst our 
fellow citizens. 

I believe that we should speak out, 
because our voices may reach the ear 
and the conscience of the German peo- 
ple when no other voices can, and be- 
cause they will reach the ear of its 
rulers. These, I know, counted upon 
the moral, if not the actual, support of 
the German-born in America to the 
extent, at least, of preventing our join- 

fl61 



OF PRUSSIA N I S M 

ing the war, and now, when we have 
joined, they count upon that support 
to agitate for an inconclusive and un- 
righteous peace. 

I beheve that we should speak out to 
convince our native-born fellow citizens 
that our fundamental conceptions of 
right and wrong are like theirs, that 
the taint of Germany is not in the blood, 
but in the system of rulership, that we are 
with them and of them wholeheartedly, 
single-mindedly and unreservedly; be- 
cause if we failed in conveying to them 
that conviction in the hour of our 
common country's stress and trial, 
there would ensue the calamity of 
a spiritual, if not an actual, breach 
between them and us which it would 
take a generation to heal. 



[17] 



THE POISON GROWTH 



III 



There are some of you, probably, 
who will still find it hard to believe that 
the Germany you knew can be guilty of 
the crimes which have made it an out- 
law amongst the nations. But do you 
know modern Germany? Unless you 
have been there within the last twenty- 
five years, not once or twice, but at 
regular intervals ; unless you have looked 
below the glittering surface of the mar- 
velous material progress and achieve- 
ment and seen how the soul of Ger- 
many was being eaten away by the 
virulent poison of Prussianism; unless 
you have watched and followed the 
appalling transformation of German 

[18] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

mentality and morality under the 
nefarious and puissant influence of the 
priesthood of power-worship, you do 
not know the Germany of this day and 
generation. 

It is not the Germany of old, the 
land of our affectionate remembrance. 
It is not the Germany which men now 
of middle age or over knew in their 
youth. It is not the Germany of the 
first Emperor William, a modest and 
God-fearing gentleman. It is not the 
Germany, even, of Bismarck, man of 
blood and iron though he was, w ho had 
builded a structure which, whilst not 
founded on liberty, yet was capable 
and gave promise of going down into 
history as one of the greatest examples 
of enlightened and even beneficent 
autocracy; who, in the contemplative 
and mellowed wisdom of his old age, 
often warned the nation against the 
very spirit which, alas, came to have 

[191 



THE POISON GROWTH 

sway over it, and against the very war 
which that spirit unchained. 

The Germany which brought upon 
the world the immeasurable disaster 
of this war, and at whose monstrous 
deeds and doctrines the civilized na- 
tions of the earth stand aghast, started 
into definite being less than thirty 
years ago. I can almost lay my finger 
upon the date and circumstances of its 
ill-omened advent. 

Less than thirty years ago, a "new 
course" was flamboyantly proclaimed 
by those in authority, and the term 
"new course" became the order of the 
day. With it and from it there came a 
truly marvelous quickening of the 
energies and creative abilities of the 
nation, a period of material achieve- 
ment and of social progress, in short, a 
national forward movement almost 
unequalled in history. The world 
looked on in admiration, perhaps not 

[20] 



OF PRUSSIANISM 

entirely free from a tinge of envy. 
Germany was conquering the earth by 
peaceful penetration; and no one stood 
in its way. It had free access to all 
the seas and all the lands. 

But with that "new course" and 
from it there also came a new god, a 
false and evil god. He exacted as sac- 
rifices for his altars the time-honored 
ideals of the fathers, and other high and 
noble things. And his commands were 
obeyed. 

There came upon the German people 
a whole train of new and baneful 
influences and impulses, formidably 
stimulating as a powerful drug. There 
came, amongst other evils, materialism 
and covetousness and irreligion; over- 
weening arrogance, an impatient con- 
tempt for the rights of the weak, a 
mania for world dominion, and a 
veritable lunacy of power worship. 
There came also a fixed and irrational 

[211 



TEE POISON GROWTH 

distrust of the intentions of other na- 
tions, for the evil which had crept into 
their own souls made them see evil in 
others, and that distrust was nurtured 
carefully and deliberately by those in 
authority. 

And, finally, there came "the day" in 
which the "new course," fatally and 
inevitably, was bound to culminate. 
There came the old temptation, as 
old as humanity itself. The Tempter 
took the Prussian and Prussianized 
rulers up a high mountain and showed 
them all the riches and power of the 
world. Showed them the great coun- 
tries and capitals of the earth teeming 
with peaceful labor — Brussels, Paris, 
London, aye, and New York, and told 
them: "Look at these. Use your power 
ruthlessly and they are yours." And 
those rulers did not say: "Get thee 
behind me, Satan;" but they said: 
"Lead on, Satan, and we shall follow 

[221 



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p R U S S I A N I S M 



thee." And follow him they did, and 
brought upon the green earth the red 
ruin of hell. 

And with rejoicing they greeted "the 
day." It was to bring them, as one 
German in an important position here 
expressed it to me, in August, 1914, "a 
merry war and victory before the year 
is out." 



231 



THE POISON GEO W T II 



IV 



Truly, history affords no parallel to 
the spiritual poisoning and the result- 
ing horrible transmutation of a whole 
people, such as Prussianism wrought 
in the incredibly short period of one 
generation. Nor would I believe that 
such a dreadful phenomenon could pos- 
sibly take place were it not for the 
evidence of my own eyes and my own 
ears. 

My observations led me to think, 
however, that Prussianism had reached 
the crest of its influence some years 
before the war and that liberal tenden- 
cies were beginning to make headway 
against it. 

[241 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

There were many men in Germany 
before the war who were opposed to and 
saw the dangers arising from militarist 
ambition and jingo teaching and raised 
their voices against them in warning. 
There was the ever-increasing Sociahst 
vote which, although Socialism in the 
German Empire does not mean what it 
means in Russia and amongst the 
extremists in our country, did mean 
opposition to Junker methods and 
reactionary tendencies. 

I am by no means sure that the very 
growth and spread of that liberal spirit 
did not have some influence in causing 
the militarist clique to precipitate the 
war, as throughout history autocracy 
has resorted frequently to the unity- 
compelling force of war in order to 
arrest, divert and thwart liberalism 
and independence. 

To deceive the German people, and 
steel them to patriotic determination 

[25] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

and sacrifice, the Prussian rulers and 
their spokesmen affirmed at the begin- 
ning of the war, and have kept re- 
affirming ever since with nauseating 
reiteration and disgusting hypocrisy, 
that theirs was a defensive war, forced 
upon them by wicked and envious 
neighbors. A defensive war, indeed! 

Let me review very rapidly the cir- 
cumstances which surrounded the be- 
ginning of the war. Austria, after the 
friction of long standing between the 
two countries, which had reached its 
culminating point in the murder of 
the Austrian heir-apparent on Serbian 
soil, sent an ultimatum to Serbia. 
The conditions of that ultimatum, 
although unexampled in their severity 
and sweeping demands, were accepted 
by Serbia almost in their entirety. 

Austria insisted on acceptance to 
the very letter, unconditional and 
absolute, within twenty-four hours 

[26] 



F 



p R U S S I A N I S M 



or war, whereupon Russia declared 
that, if war was thus forced upon 
Httle Serbia, she would stand by 
her. After much backing and filling, at 
the last minute, Austria shrank from 
the calamity of a world conflagration 
and declared herself ready to enter into 
friendly negotiations with Russia. 
The frightful danger which threatened 
the world seemed to be on the way of 
being removed. 

But the Prussian militarist party, 
seeing in their grasp the opportunity 
for which they had planned and plotted 
these thirty years, were not wiUing to 
let it go by, and they did not shrink 
from the catastrophe which was in- 
volved. 

Heretofore Austria had held the cen- 
tre of the stage and Germany had pro- 
fessed herself unable to interfere. But 
when Austria was on the point of re- 
ceding, Germany did interfere, and, on 

[27] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

the plea of the menace of the Russian 
mobihzation (a mobihzation which 
there is reason to suspect was dehb- 
erately provoked through machina- 
tions from Berhn), started the war by 
an ultimatum to Russia, which was 
tantamount to declaring war, on the 
very day on which Austria yielded. 
Let it be remembered that whatever 
menace the Russian mobilization may 
have contained was infinitely greater 
against Austria than against Germany, 
and yet Austria, on the last day in 
July, 1914, declared herself ready to 
negotiate. 

I know something from actual and 
personal experience of the plotting of 
the Prussian war party, and how for a 
full generation they had endeavored 
again and again to bring about a situa- 
tion which would force war upon the 
world. I know of my personal knowl- 
edge that the stage was set for it six 

[28] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

or seven years ago in connection with 
the Agaclir episode. 

I know that the Pan-Germans meant 
to have a footing in South America, 
and, once there, would have threatened 
and had prepared to threaten, this very 
country of ours. 

I know that Austria, in 1913, meant 
to conquer Serbia, and so informed her 
then ahy, Italy, believing that she 
could do so with impunity. 

And I know that Austria did not 
believe that her ultimatum to Serbia in 
July, 1914, would bring on a serious war. 

I know it, because the week following 
the outbreak of the war I saw a letter 
just arrived from a gentleman in high 
position in Austria, connected with 
the Austrian Foreign Office, in which, 
writing to New York under date of 
about July 20, 1914, he said: 

"We are now passing through a nerve-wear- 
ing time because of our difficulty with Serbia, 

[29] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

but by the time this letter reaches you every- 
thing will be all right again. The Serbians 
have been intriguing against us these many 
years, and this time they must be settled with 
for good and all. We shall go in and take 
Belgrade, but inasmuch as we have given as- 
surance to Russia that we shall not perma- 
nently interfere with the integrity and inde- 
pendence of Serbia, and inasmuch as neither 
Russia nor her Allies are ready to fight, the 
whole thing will be a military promenade and 
will have no serious consequences." 

A defensive war! Was it a defensive 
war which Prussianism was thinking of 
when it decHned England's repeated 
offer for a reduction by both countries 
of the building of warships ; when it re- 
fused at the last Hague conference to 
discuss the hmitation of standing armies 
and armaments ; when Germany — alone 
amongst the great nations — rejected 
our offer of a treaty of arbitration? 

Years before the war, Nietzsche, 
than whom no man had greater influ- 

[30] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

ence in shaping the trend of German 
thought in the past thirty years, wrote : 

"You shall love peace as a means to prepare 
for new wars. You say that a good cause 
may hallow even war, but I say to you that it 
is a good war which hallows every cause." 

On July 29, 1914, the well informed 
German newspaper, "Vorwaerts," de- 
clared : 

"The camarilla of war-lords is working with 
absolutely unscrupulous means to carry out 
their fearful designs to precipitate a world 
war." 

In October, 1914, three months after 
the outbreak of the war, Maximilian 
Harden, one of the ablest and most 
influential of German publicists, wrote : 

"Let us renounce those miserable efforts to 
excuse the actions of Germany in declaring 
war. It is not against our will that we have 
thrown ourselves into this gigantic adventure. 
The war has not been imposed upon us by 

[311 



THE POISON GROWTH 

others and by surprise. We have willed the 
war. It was our duty to will it. We decline 
to appear before the tribunal of united Europe. 
We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone 
counts and no other — one principle which 
contains and sums up all the others — might.'' 

I could go on for hours quoting sim- 
ilar views and sentiments from the 
utterances of leading German writers 
and educators before and since the 
war. (It is worth mentioning, though, 
that Maximilian Harden has seen a new 
Hght, and for some time has been cour- 
ageously speaking and writing in a very 
different strain. There are a number 
of influential men in Germany who, 
like him, have undergone a change of 
mind and heart. Strong and outspoken 
assertions of liberal sentiment and in- 
dependent aspirations have found ut- 
terance in that country in the course of 
the last six months, such as have not 
been heard within its frontiers these 
many years. 

[321 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

A defensive war! There are certain 
telegrams from Sir Edward Grey, the 
British Minister for Foreign Affairs, to 
the British Ambassador in Germany, 
sent during the week preceding the 
outbreak of the war in Europe, which 
even to this day are unknown in Ger- 
many, as they were never permitted to 
be pubhshed. In these messages the 
British Foreign Minister went almost 
on his knees to beg Germany to consent 
to a conference in order to avoid war. 

He went to the utmost limits in 
promising benevolent consideration for 
Germany's viewpoint and wishes, then 
and in the future, and he stated that if 
Germany would put forward any reason- 
able proposition honestly calculated to 
maintain peace, England would sup- 
port it with all of its influence, and if 
France and Russia would not fall in line 

[331 



THE POISON GROWTH 

England would promptly separate it- 
self from these two countries. 

These overtures and pleas met with 
no response from the Masters of Ger- 
many. They declared war. 

It is probably true that the Russian 
Pan-Slavists had planned war sooner or 
later, just as the Pan-Germans did. 
War might perhaps have come then or 
at some other time, even if the Prus- 
sian rulers had not precipitated it. 
But the fact remains that it was the 
Imperial German Government which 
did declare war. For having antici- 
pated that "perhaps," and resolved it 
according to their own plans and wishes, 
for that, their initial crime, and for 
those which followed, the rulers of the 
German people will have to answer 
before the judgment stool of God and 
history. Upon them rests the blood- 
guilt for this dreadful catastrophe 
which has befallen the world. 

[341 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 



V 



A few days ago I read a poem ad- 
dressed to Germany, of which these 
Hnes have remained in my memory : 

"Oh, land of now, oh, land of then, 
Dear God, the dreams, the dreams of men! 
Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate. 
Where are the things which made you great?" 

The things which made Germany 
great are not dead, and the world can- 
not afford to allow them to die. They 
belong to the immortal possessions of 
the human race. 

They have passed, for the time being, 
alas, out of the keeping of the mass of 
the German people, whose glorious 
inheritance they were. 

[35] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

They are now in the keeping of that 
minority, not perhaps, very great as 
yet, but growing steadily, of men in 
Germany itself from whose eyes the 
scales have begun to fall. They are in 
the keeping of all the nations who 
appreciate and cherish and are deter- 
mined to maintain those great and high 
things which the civilized world has 
attained through the toil, sacrifice and 
suffering of its best in the course of 
many centuries. And, above all, they 
are in the keeping of the ten or 
fifteen millions of Americans of Ger- 
man descent. 

As that great American of German 
birth, Carl Schurz, and many other 
brave and high-minded Germans — my 
own father, I am proud to say, among 
them — in 1848 stood in arms against 
Prussian oppression, for liberal ideas 
and right and truth and freedom, so do 
we stand now. In fighting for the cause 

[36] 



OF P R U S S I A N I S M 

of America as loyal Americans, we are 
fighting at the same time for the deliv- 
erance of the country of our birth from 
those unrighteous powers which hold it 
enthralled and feed upon its soul. 

If ever a nation entered a war after 
having maintained infinite forbearance 
in the face of grave menace and dangers 
and the most intolerable affronts, and 
from motives as pure and high as the 
great blue dome of heaven, America 
is that nation. 

We seek no reward whatsoever of a 
material nature. We seek no "place in 
the sun" — to use the German Chancel- 
lor's term — except the sun of liberty, 
and that we do not seek selfishly, but to 
share with all the world. 

America is not waging a war of ven- 
geance, notwithstanding all the injuries 
and measureless provocations we have 
received. We have lighted a fire to 
purify, not to burn at the stake. 

[371 



THE POISON GROWTH 

America is incapable of hating an 
entire people, but we do hate, we are 
fighting and we shall fight with every 
ounce of our might, the spirit which 
has power over the people of Germany, 
and which, if it were to prevail — as, 
under God, it never will — would destroy 
liberty, justice and plighted faith. It 
was not the people of Great Britain 
which America fought in the War of the 
Revolution, but the spirit and the 
ruling caste which then held sway over 
them. America fought then for an 
ideal and for liberty and independence, 
and sacrificed blood and treasure and 
suffered and endured and won. And so 
it will be now. 

The spirit of Prussianism and the 
spirit of Americanism cannot live in 
the same world. One or the other must 
conquer. 

In the mad pride of its contempt for 
democracy, Prussianism has thrown 

[38] 



OF PRUSSIANISM 

down the gauntlet to us. We have 
taken up the challenge and now stand 
arrayed by the side of the other free- 
dom-loving nations of the world, giving 
our fresh strength and our boundless 
resources to them who, heroically striv- 
ing, have borne the heat and burden of 
a dreadfully long and exhausting strug- 
gle, yet stand unwearied, erect and 
resolute. 

The enemy is of formidable strength. 
But even if he were far stronger than he 
is, even if we did not have the men and 
the means which are ours, even if our 
comrades-in-arms had not demon- 
strated their superb and indomitable 
prowess, still must our cause prevail — 
for there is fighting with us a force which 
has ever proved itself stronger than any 
other power on earth, and again and 
again has triumphed over overwhelm- 
ing odds. That force, God-inspired, 

[39] 



THE POISON GROWTH 

death-defying and unconquerable, is 
the soul of man. 

And when — Heaven grant it may be 
soon! — the soul of the German people 
will have freed itself from the sinister 
powers that now keep it in ban and 
bondage, when it will have found again 
the high impulses and aims of its former 
self, when it will once more understand 
and speak the universal language of 
humanity and right, then, in God's own 
time there will be peace. 



40] 



I TRRORY OF CONGRESS 

.JH!I 

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